Comic-Con ’08: No Rest For Batman

Posted by SH

Having the fastest movie ever to top $300 million isn’t enough for the Caped Crusader. He’ll be hitting both the small screen and the bookshelf this fall with incarnations far different than the blacker-than-black version currently in theaters. “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” comes to Cartoon Network on Nov. 14, and it will wear its love of nostalgia proudly on its brightly colored sleeve. Taking its name from a comic book that pairs Batman with a different superhero each issue, and almost always took him out of Gotham City, the series will bring to life many second-tier DC Comics heroes that rarely if ever have lived beyond the page. Green Arrow, Blue Beetle, Red Tornado, Plastic Man — those are just the ones we saw in the clip, which was set to some sweet up-tempo jazz music that will serve as the theme song. Diedrich Bader (many know him from “The Drew Carey Show” — I prefer to think of him as the “two chicks at the same time” guy from “Office Space”) will voice Batman, and some other guest voices include R. Lee Ermey, Tom Kenny and Will Friedle. It’s not made for kids, necessarily, but it’s definitely one kids can watch. The most memorable moment of the Comic-Con session came from a little guy, in fact, who stepped up to the mic and asked what the Batmobile will be able to do in this show. When told it will be able to do anything, he replied with a sincere “Sweet!” that brought the house down and reminded us all why we love this stuff in the first place. Don’t miss it, folks.

I said something about a book, right? Well, back in the 1960s, Batman was catching on all over the world during the height of the kitschy-even-then Adam West TV series. Japan, for instance, adapted the characters for its own line of comics, and was the only country outside the U.S. to officially get authorization from DC Comics to do so. Seeing Batman through different, super happy-fun eyes is a kick, and 400 pages of it are collected in Chip Kidd’s “Bat-Manga: The Secret History of Batman in Japan,” due to hit bookstores in October. In addition to the actual Batman manga stories, there is tons of merchandise that hasn’t seen the light of day in over 40 years, and stuff that the head of DC said he had never even seen. Kidd said he’s already collected enough for a sequel, and he whispered in my ear that a similar project is underway with another DC stalwart — some guy who wears a blue suit and a red cape.